Ruth Dudley Edwards: I’m glad to see Orange Order boxing clever on Drumcree; it might be a good moment to declare a moral victory
The Drumcree issue is back in the news, though there is hope that this time round no one has to die over it.
After a legal challenge by a member of the Orange Order, the High Court has quashed the Parades Commission ban on the annual parade down the Garvaghy Road after a service in Drumcree church, which has operated for 28 years.
A novice as a political journalist, I spent years from the mid-1990s immersed for long periods covering crises involving the loyal orders and residents groups, wrote innumerable articles and ended up writing a book about it.
Though I tried to be objective, I concluded pretty early on that Sinn Fein had set up the major confrontations and made my position clear.
So I was pleased when no less a figure than Gerry Adams confirmed my suspicions in his remarks to a closed republican meeting in County Meath, broadcast on RTE in 1997.
“Ask any activist in the north,” he advised the audience, “did Drumcree happen by accident and he will tell you, ‘no.’
“Three years of work on the lower Ormeau Road, Portadown and parts of Fermanagh and Newry, Armagh and in Bellaghy and up in Derry.
“Three years of work went into creating that situation and fair play to those people who put the work in.
“They are the type of scene changes that we have to focus on and develop and exploit.”
And no one could accuse them of not exploiting them.
Since I didn’t share the received international view that Orangemen were thugs and bigots tramping over the human rights of oppressed Catholics — not least because I had met and become friends with many of them — it was a contentious period and I had many free and frank disagreements on radio and television.
In retrospect, for I welcome comic relief, one of my favourite memories is from 1999 and occurred after one of the launches of The Faithful Tribe.
I was on a train from Liverpool when my phone rang and the unexpected person on the other end turned out to be the rather endearingly dotty Lord Longford, whom I had known a bit since the 1980s and rather liked, whose motto was “Hate the sin, love the sinner”.
“Ruth, Ruth Ruth!” he was crying, “why do you have anything to do with these terrible Orangemen?”
I made an effort to explain that there were very many decent people among them, but there was no comforting him.
“No, no, you don’t understand: they are dreadful people.”
Since I was a bit trammelled by being in a railway carriage where a few people seemed interested, I felt it necessary to close the conversation down as soon as possible.
“Frank,” I said, “May I remind you that you have befriended Myra Hindley and Dennis Nilsen?”
Having despaired for years about the self-defeating tactics of the Orange Order, I’m glad to see them boxing clever, but I think this might be a good moment to declare a moral victory, lament the suffering there has been involved and graciously withdraw.
l Ruth Dudley Edwards’s books include The Faithful Tribe: an intimate portrait of the loyal institutions.